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R. S Gillen - Analyst in the Frame

R. S. Gillen

The recent death of Bob Gillen was
keenly felt by the Adelaide Branch, and the Adelaide Institute, for
Psychoanalysis (AIP).Being asked to
write about a senior member of a very small Branch of course leads one to
reflect on Bob’s contributions, his life in
the Branch, all of it interwoven with the life of the Branch itself as well as whatmay have been gleaned of the man himself.

Bob wrote candidly about his background,
in his brief autobiographical piece for Psychoanalysis Downunder, “The Tale of a Reluctant Psychoanalyst”.Candor and simplicity, openness alternating
with a need to maintain a sense of privacy about himself, seemed to make Bob
both approachable and complex.

In The
Tale of a Reluctant Psychoanalyst, he describes the daunting personal
experiences that shaped him, and in qualifying as a psychoanalyst in difficult
local circumstances. This was well after he’d worked variously as a ship’s
doctor and country GP after his tours of duty in the Navy during WWII.He became heavily involved in the Group
Psychotherapy movement at the Queen Elizabeth Hospital, in the Adelaide Branch
as Chairperson and Training Analyst, and for a time was President of the
Australian Psychoanalytical Society.

It seems understandable and consistent
then, given his struggles, that an impression one gained was that he was as
content in the outback camping with old friends, as he was when simply
consulting in his practice, grappling with the meanings of his patients’
experiences.

As a colleague, and consultant in
private practice, Bob was generous towards the many registrars who came to him
for their undergraduate psychiatry training. The same generosity was evident
years later, in the several interstate analytic student weekends he
enthusiastically attended, between illnesses stoically endured.

As a founding member of the AIP, Bob was
steadfastly behind the birth and survival of the Adelaide Branch. One sees in
retrospect, how he valued and kept to Laing’s notions of “the frame” and
containment, in maintaining a group identity. This must have been at work too,
in a more personal way, in his most recent plans to use his clinical experience
to help soldiers returning from the war in Afghanistan.He had no difficulty, however, maintaining a
golfing identity in an altogether different group, this being a less
complicated and long-held passion.

Robert (Bob) Spencer Gillen,
ex-serviceman, jackaroo, golfer and psychoanalyst, passed away in the company
of his wife and three children on the 21st January 2014, after a
short illness, at the age of 88. A private family ceremony was held to mark his
passing.